Tech History Made on January 4, 1809

On this day in 1809 Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, France. Braille was blind from a youth and read in school by feeling letters (like the ones you're reading now) raised on paper.It was not easy to do, especially differentiating between letters such as O and D. So Braille designed a system of raised dots that represented all the letters of the alphabet and numbers. He patterned his system after a code French soldiers used to communicate. Braille's system (known today of course simply as "braille") spread worldwide afters Louis Braille's death in 1852. Below, you see this paragraph written in braille.